"Emergence of Autonomous Vehicles and Drone Taxis... Active Expansion of Auto Insurance Needed"

The Era of Mobility Transition... The Role of Auto Insurance

[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Hyung-gil] With the advent of fully autonomous vehicles, urban air mobility such as drone taxis, and platform-based shared cars, the insurance industry is facing calls to respond to changes in automobile insurance.

It has been pointed out that improvements to the compensation system for minor injury patients and the medical fee review system are urgently needed to ensure the sustainability of automobile insurance.

On the 2nd, Hwang Hyun-ah, a research fellow at the Korea Insurance Research Institute, divided the role of automobile insurance into traditional, modern, and mobility eras and presented 11 review tasks in the report titled "The Role and Challenges of Automobile Insurance: Past, Present, and Future of Automobile Insurance."

Researcher Hwang explained, "Traditionally, automobile insurance has served as a social safety net by providing relief to traffic accident victims and stabilizing the lives of vehicle owners," adding, "in the past, the main task was to comprehensively expand the scope and level of compensation, but recently, the main task has shifted to identifying and resolving compensation gaps."

He pointed out the need to review compensation measures for carpool accidents, falling object accidents, and the application of operator liability for property damage accidents.

The Role and Challenges of Auto Insurance (Source: Korea Insurance Research Institute)

He continued, "After the popularization of automobiles, the need to rationalize insurance premium burdens and insurance payout expenditures to ensure the sustainability of automobile insurance has increased," and stated, "Although effects in reducing premiums were achieved through insurance fraud prevention and improvements to the minor accident property damage compensation system, deficits have continued, requiring additional measures."

He proposed the need to rationalize insurance payouts through improvements to the compensation system for minor injury patients and the medical fee review system, thereby appropriately adjusting the insurance premium burden.

Additionally, Researcher Hwang emphasized, "As the focus of transportation shifts from 'automobiles' to 'mobility,' automobile insurance must also respond accordingly," adding, "It is necessary to establish dedicated insurance systems to address risks arising from newly emerging modes of transportation such as autonomous vehicles (AV), personal mobility devices (PM), and urban air mobility (UAM)."

He also added that it is necessary to respond to operational system changes resulting from the introduction of platform-based shared services and integrated transportation systems like Mobility as a Service (MaaS).

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.